Re: [RFC] Stripping Latin range in fonts used by g-i installer?
On 09/01/2008, Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> wrote:
> On Wednesday 09 January 2008, Eddy Petrișor wrote:
> > > Also, this is a completely separate issue from what we were discussing
> > > as it would _still_ result in duplication of latin characters.
> >
> > No, since the range in question wouldn't be pulled in by anything (the
> > codepoints would belong to the language or the unicode range that
> > obviously belongs to the language using the font).
> >
> > For instance for the Amharic language, the font would end up having
> > only the glyphs for the codepoints which are used in the translation
> > and all the Ethiopian unicode points. Anything else falls out of the
> > font.
>
> But most translations, even in other scripts, still use quite a lot of latin
> glyphs.
Yes, but in most cases[1] you want only one font to provide those,
namely dejavu. The other fonts would actually have them just in
exceptional cases like the CJK font.
You have more situations:
- non-latin language using latin glyphs which need them from the same
font (e.g. CJK languages)
- non-latin language latin glyphs which would be better using dejavu
latin glyphs instead of their corresponding font's latin glyphs (I
suspect Amharic, asuming the specific font's Ethiopian glyphs match
dejavu's latin glyphs)
- language using already dejavu
My proposal would hit the second category (given that we also mask out
latin glyphs[2], so is dropped from the specific font) and could help
for the first category, too.
What I meanis that in most cases there should be a clear language to
font mapping, in some cases backed up by dejavu for latin.
> You are also forgetting that quite a few strings with latin glyphs are
> generated *at run time* (e.g. udeb names and descriptions in anna; file
> systems and mount points; names of LVM volumes; time zones; ...) and you
run-time generated strings will be covered by the glyphs belonging to
masked in areas.
> really do not want the situation where some latin glyphs are taken from the
> font from Amharic and some other latin glyphs are taken from DejaVu or
> FreeSans.
You either have all latin in the (e.g.) Amharic font, or you don't
have any in that font. If you do, is used; if not, all latin glyphs
are missing from the primary font and dejavu provides them anyhow. If
done properly (and no language needs it), we might even drop freefont
entirely.
[1] exceptions include CJK languages, but that already was thought of
when I said "(and we consider we should strip it)" when I was talking
about which fonts are stripped.
[2] I missed this in my first proposal
--
Regards,
EddyP
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"Imagination is more important than knowledge" A.Einstein
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